Clinical Operations Featured Articles

  1. Clinical Staff Shortage: “Growing Plague” For Pharma & CROs 11/2/2016

    Anyone involved with clinical trials knows a continuing and growing problem in the industry is the lack of qualified clinical research staff. A new report from BioPharm Insight (BPI) acknowledges this trend, noting the staff shortage is a “growing plague to the CRO industry which will need to be addressed in order to ease liabilities.”

  2. Clinical News Roundup: FDA Approves Oncology Trial For Cuban Treatment 10/28/2016

    Clinical news roundup for the week of October 23rd with information on an oncology treatment developed in Cuba, AZ suspending recruitment on two trials, an SCRS white paper on site payments, a new platform for wearables in clinical trials, the CRA shortage, and more.

  3. SCRS: Site/Sponsor Relationship Needs Improvement 10/28/2016

    At the 2016 SCRS (Society for Clinical Research Sites) Global Site Summit, Christine Pierre, president of SCRS, shared the results of a survey conducted of site professionals from around the world. The survey is conducted every year, just prior to the summit, to gauge the opinion of site professionals on various issues and trends. If the results are any indication, there is still room for improvement in sponsor/site relationships.

  4. Clinical News Roundup: Sanofi Invests To Bring Clinical Trials Home 10/23/2016

    Clinical news roundup for the week of October 21, 2016 with information on Sanofi and Science 37 bringing clinical trials to the home, SCRS Eagle Award winners, a precision master trial for AML, promoting trials to patients, stopping the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, and more.

  5. The Benefits Of Outsourcing Clinical Regulatory Requirements 10/20/2016

    When I sat down to speak with Paul Bridges, Ph.D., corporate VP and Interim head of PAREXEL Consulting at the 2016 DIA Annual Meeting, we had recently heard the news of Great Britain exiting the European Union. Bridges seemed to take it completely in stride, noting there will always be changes occurring that can disrupt and erect obstacles to your drug development efforts. While we can’t stop them, we can certainly take advantage of the resources available from partners to better navigate them and mitigate their effects.

  6. What Will Clinical Research Certification Mean To Pharma? 10/18/2016

    The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) is a not-for-profit organization that has been around for over 100 years. Its primary mission is assessing the qualifications of healthcare professionals. More recently, the group has been looking into developing an assessment that would be helpful to clinical researchers.

  7. TransCelerate Seeks To Improve Clinical Trial Quality 10/12/2016

    TransCelerate Biopharma is all about collaboration. The group’s goal is to identify, prioritize, design, and facilitate the implementation of solutions to help sponsors efficiently and effectively produce needed medicines for patients. In this interview Deb Driscoll, VP of quality assurance at Merck and lead of the TransCelerate QMS (quality management system), discusses how the initiative hopes to improve quality in clinical trials.

  8. How Nektar Therapeutics Improves The Transactional Outsourcing Model 10/3/2016

    As pharma’s use of CROs continues to grow, so does the talk about outsourcing models. Today, one of the most popular models seems to be highly integrated strategic partnerships. Unfortunately, that model does not work for every company. Partnering agreements often seem to be built on a broad and sustainable pipeline, but for small- and mid-sized companies, that pipeline often does not exist.

  9. The High Price Of Failed Clinical Trials: Time To Rethink The Model 10/3/2016

    Back in 2014, a study in Nature Biotech showed that only 32% of drugs have a probability of making it to Phase 3 trials, and only one in 10 drugs overall actually makes it to market. Things haven’t improved since then. BIO recently put out a study reporting that the average overall likelihood of approval (LOA) by FDA from Phase I was 9.6 percent – a 1 in 10 chance. The rate is even lower for major disease areas like oncology.

  10. Clinical News Roundup: Is 80 Percent Of China's Clinical Data Fabricated? 9/30/2016

    Radio Free Asia (RFA) is reporting that a government investigation in China has revealed fraudulent practice on a massive scale in clinical trials. China's food and drug regulator recently carried out a one-year review of clinical trials, concluding that more than 80 percent of clinical data is "fabricated," state media reported.